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Stacy Lloyd PMP
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Professional by Definition

by Peter de Jager
Technobility

Ask a dozen Doctors of Medicine to describe/define “Laparoscopic Surgery” and while you will receive back a dozen verbalizations, you will end up with a single coherent definition. Likewise, ask a dozen Professional Engineers to define/describe a “Flying buttress” and once again, you will receive back twelve articulations, which are obviously, even to a non-engineer, referring to the same structure.

That’s part of what belonging to a profession means... a group of people who speak the same language, have access to a common body of knowledge and understanding, and have the ability to communicate this joint understanding to others outside of that circle of expertise.

With this perspective of what it means to belong to a profession as a starting point, is the IT industry a profession? Here’s a test, take a commonly used IT term like “Knowledge Management” (or CRM, or ERP etc. etc.) and ask a dozen IT “Professionals” to define/describe what it is. A quick search on Google for /”Knowledge Management” Definition/ offered up these definitions.

“KM caters to the critical issues of organizational adaption, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings” Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, Founding Chairman and CKO of BRINT Institute

“KM is the management of the organization towards the continuous renewal of the organizational knowledge base - this means e.g. creation of supportive organizational structures, facilitation of organizational members, putting IT-instruments with emphasis on teamwork and diffusion of knowledge (as e.g. groupware) into place.” Thomas Bertels is a partner of Valeocon Management Consulting

“KM is an audit of “intellectual assets” that highlights unique sources, critical functions and potential bottlenecks which hinder knowledge flows to the point of use. It protects intellectual assets from decay, seeks opportunities to enhance decisions, services and products through adding intelligence, increasing value and providing flexibility.” Denham Grey of GreyMatter Inc.

And that’s just the three topmost definitions taken off the voluminous search results (600,000+ hits). Anyone want to place any bets that the rest of them won’t blend into a single/concise definition?

With no disrespect intended to the experts quoted above, these definitions taken together, fail miserably to paint a single coherent picture of what we’re talking about when we use a term like “Knowledge Management”.

I’m considered by some to know something about IT (little do they know) and to my ‘trained’ ear, the above definitions do very little to tell me what KM is, and what it does. They are seemingly meant to impress through obfuscation. An art form we in IT have elevated to Olympian heights.

There are definitions in IT that professionals share as a common body of knowledge; Shell and Butterfly sorts, the Boyce-Codd Normal Form of Data, Waterfall development, backups, documentation, testing etc. etc. We might not practice them, we might not agree in the efficacy of the pure forms, we might disagree on when to adhere to them, but we at least agree on what they are.

While I'd hesitate to suggest that we have ‘officially sanctioned’ definitions of buzz words (who would decide?), but it should be obvious that we at least agree to stop using buzzwords as if they had an agreed upon definition.

Over the years I’ve developed an amusing, informative and often unintentionally cruel habit. If I’m in a meeting and someone uses a buzzword, I ask the outrageous and I guess, socially incorrect question, I ask the speaker to define the word/phrase they just uttered.

Typically this prompts a round robin discussion of what the term really means. Sometimes, it becomes very embarrassing, as the person who voiced the term is totally incapable of offering a definition. They literally don’t know what they’re talking about.

Some have suggested that asking for a definition is impolite, but my response is that unless we agree on what we’re talking about, any solution or course of action arising out of such a conversation is bogus.

There is a solution to this self-imposed Tower of Babel and that is to stop using word/phrases which don’t convey commonly agreed upon knowledge. Or, if we insist on using a new term, then we must define it every time we use it. At least that way we’ll know what we’re talking about.

© 2005 Peter de Jager – Peter is interested in all things related to Management, but especially Change Management. Contact him at Pdejager@technobility.com

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